[geeks] product quality

[Phil Stracchino]

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> It's a whole lot of "nobody ever got fired for buying $vendor" and a
> little bit of "computers are just -like that-; they crash a lot"

I've heard it said that the deepest and most lasting legacy of Microsoft
on the computer industry has been the lowering of end-user expectations
of stability.  People EXPECT computers to crash, thanks to Microsoft.


> Seriously, I've considered putting together a short book called "Good
> Enough For Goverment Work: IT Boondoggles in the Public Sector".  I have
> enough stories[1] to fill a chapter or two.  I'm sure other folks do, as
> well.

If you can do it without violating any nondisclosures, DO IT.  People
need to know how their tax dollars are being squandered and wasted on
turning small problems into big ones.


> [0] This wins my vote for "shittiest software product on the planet".
>      Yes, it beats out Windows ME, ancient versions of dBase, SCO
>      OpenDesktop, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Exchange.  Anything it
>      can get wrong, it gets wrong.
> [1] Like when an IBM contractor spent two weeks rewriting[2] the spooler
>      in TCL because he was -convinced- that AIX's print subsystem
>      wouldn't DTRT if the printer or the server was downed while jobs
>      were in the spool.  Or the Price-Waterhouse contractor that
>      reimplemented cron in Java because "IBM would never approve of using
>      a platform-specific tool like cron".
> [2] Inside of which he called the system spooler!!


And the thing that makes me sometimes want to jump off a bridge or
something is that these drooling imbeciles can get jobs, while so many
people I know with real clue can't.  (A group in which I still have at
least some ambition of counting myself.)


-- 
 Phil Stracchino       phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
    Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
 Mobile: 603-216-7037         Landline: 603-886-3518